Just a quick story from the annals of crazy things my coworkers say.

It’s true, I’m not generally a huge fan of the body scanner the TSA puts us through at many airports these days. And thanks to friendly advice from the comments in a post about it I now opt out of the low-level radiation if I’m not running late, and ask for the pat down instead. So far, so good. TSA employees have been super gracious when I do.

But I did have a small moment of appreciation for these X-ray machines, when a San Francisco-based coworker of mine—let’s call her Annie—told me how, on a recent work trip from SFO to LAX, she was pulled aside because her skin was, in fact, reading as explosive.

According to Annie’s retelling, the screen of the scanner was displaying red areas on her body that indicate the presence of a dangerous substance. And when they ran that special paper over her skin, and inserted it into the magic machine that detects such substances, it was no fluke: explosive again.

Since I blew the reveal in the title, you know where this is going. Turns out that the fancy cream Annie had recently bagged from a hotel room was indeed explosive enough to turn up on both of these fine testing tools.

While we had a good chuckle at this ludicrous tale of modern-world woes, it’s not really that funny (definitely a little bit, though). Imagine a more enlightened future where we recount these stories to our grandchildren: “Why, of course, we needed X-ray scanners Sonny boy, how else would we be able to detect that terrorists could be packing in their underwear, and that our skincare products may blow up. It’s not like the government was insisting they be tested for safety.” I mean, what the heck.

As for Annie, I’m hoping this was a wake-up call. You can bet I’ll be bringing copies of the book by the office on my next visit to San Francisco.

Anybody else have some crazy explosive cosmetics stories? A certain nail polish comes to mind…